2017 AMC 10B Problem 24
Attempt Problem 24 of the 2017 AMC 10B below, then check your answer against the professionally curated solution from LIVE by Po-Shen Loh. You can also try the full timed exam, view all 2017 AMC 10B solutions, or check the answer key.
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24.
The vertices of an equilateral triangle lie on the hyperbola and a vertex of this hyperbola is the centroid of the triangle. What is the square of the area of the triangle?
Answer: C
Solution:
By symmetry, assume that the centroid is the hyperbola vertex At least two triangle vertices lie on the same branch of the hyperbola. They cannot both lie on the negative branch: if two of their -coordinates were negative, the third would exceed while the sum of the three -coordinates would be less than contradicting that their centroid is Thus two vertices lie on the positive branch.
Write these vertices as and where The centroid of an equilateral triangle is also its circumcenter, so and are equidistant from For the squared distance from to is This is strictly increasing as increases from so the distinct points must satisfy Hence and are reflections across
The third vertex lies on the perpendicular bisector Its coordinates also satisfy so it is either or It cannot equal the centroid, so it is Therefore, the circumradius is the distance from to namely
Dividing the equilateral triangle into three triangles at its center gives its area as The square of the area is
Thus, the correct answer is C .
Problem 24 in Other Years
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